Spoonie kitchen hacks + transition update

Hi y’all!

I’m back with another food related post. Today I wanted to share a few tips to make cooking your own food easier. Cooking can take up a lot of energy, but despite that I still love doing it. So here are a few things I do to make it a little less draining.

1 Have a seat at hand

This one may seem a bit obvious, but it’s a big one. Standing up can take a lot of energy, so being able to sit down whenever you have to wait for something can be really helpful. Depending on how mobile you are and how much space you have this can be anything from a kitchen step to a proper chair. I also like to take stuff that needs to be chopped into the living room and do my chopping behind my desk, this way I can do this sitting down without having a low worktop in my kitchen.

2 Quicker and less work are not the same

If you’re home a lot like me, there’s no need to rush. Tossing food in the oven or a slowcooker may take more time, but they take a lot less work than cooking stovetop. Because you don’t constantly have to attend when stuff is cooking, you just pop it in and let the appliance do it’s thing and voila, you have a good meal. You can even do other stuff in the mean time, or take a nap. Ok granted, a power nap for some dishes.

3 Use a food processor to do the chopping

Who cares if it doesn’t look as pretty. At the end of a dish does it really matter what shape the pieces of onion are? At least to me it doesn’t. The dishes may not be worth it for a single onion, but if you have a lot of chopping to do the food processor is a life saver. You can use the pule function to keep an eye on how fine your food gets chopped. Some food processors come with blades for grating, slicing and more too, which are handy too.

4 Make food that stores well in large batches

Really anything, from white rice, chilli, soups to just about anything you wouldn’t mind eating as leftovers really. I have a huge freezer mostly for this reason. Making 4 portions is often hardly more work than making 1 or 2, but being able to grab leftovers from the freezer is so much cheaper than eating out (or ordering in) or even microwave meals. What’s not to love about having meals ready to grab instead of leftover veggies wasting away because you don’t know what to do with them. And it’s not just full meals that are handy to have on hand. Things like homemade broth (which is a great way to use up old veggies), homemade vegan cheese, plain rice and other staples. I don’t toss everything in the freezer though, things like white rice are so versatile they will often be used before going bad in the fridge.

5 Gather your ingredients beforehand

Not only does this make daunting long ingredient lists a little easier to navigate, it also saves you from having to hurry to the fridge when you have pans on the stove. Having your ingredients ready to grab will save you both mental and physical stress. Making cooking so much calmer can also make it a lot more pleasant. If you are working from a recipe you will have to reference it less, leaving more focus for the actual cooking. It may seem like extra work, because you suddenly have two extra steps, but trust me, you’d be grabbing it and putting it back either way, you’re just managing your time better. The amount of stress you save yourself is worth it, I promise. You might even want to go as far as measuring your ingredients beforehand if you struggle with reading the recipe, but this may take a little more dishes, so you decide if that is worth it or not.

6 Buy in bulk

I really enjoy just having ingredients I use a lot at hand whenever I need them. Or want them for that matter. It saves me from having to run to the supermarket whenever I have an urge to make something. It actually makes grocery shopping itself a lot easier too. Not having to buy things like flour, salt and rice every other week saves so much time. There’s less to think of and less to carry. Though of course you will have to carry it at some point, unless you buy it online. But since that’s only every now and then it’s easier to ask help for than for the regular groceries in my opinion. I usually manage to get stuff home on my own (bless having a bike) and ask my partner to drag it upstairs. We do live on the 3rd floor after all. Things I tend to buy in bulk are; flour, rice, salt, spices I use a lot, baking ingredients with a long shelf life and more. Since meat has made it’s way back into our household (long story for another time) I even buy bulk deals of that (which still aren’t that big here). We don’t eat a lot of it, but I just freeze it.

7 Summarise recipes

Write or type out a summary of recipes you use a lot but still struggle to remember. This could just be a list of ingredients or a summary of the instructions as well. Then tape them to your kitchen cupboards. This will save you a lot of digging through recipe books and scanning through recipes, and therefore stress.

Those were my tips. Do you have any you would like to share? Let me know in the comments!

Another thing I want to share is an update on my transition. Two days ago I had my third appointment at the gender clinic. I got 3 new appointments this time! The next one with the therapist, a consult for top surgery and one with the endo! The last two are still several months away, because of waiting lists, but at least I’m on those waiting lists! And let’s be honest, it not as if the appointment with the endo is forever away. And honestly with the sudden heat I’m longing to be able to not wear anything under my shirt more than I am to be read as male. So yeah, that’s moving surprisingly fast. I still can’t wait though.